Republished via the Future of Freedom Foundation: The Future of Freedom Foundation hosted one of the most fascinating, important, and relevant conferences in our 27-year history. Entitled “The National Security State and JFK,” the conference was held on Saturday, June 3, 2017, at the Dulles Airport Marriott in Northern Virginia. Jacob Hornberger, FFF's founder and president, presented his talk, “The National Security State: The Biggest Mistake in U.S. History”:
Donald Trump: Cold War Anachronism
Perhaps President Trump thinks that by further destroying the freedom of the American people to travel and spend money in Cuba, he can ingratiate himself with the national-security establishment in the hopes they will lay off him with their Russia meddling investigation. Regardless, Trump’s actions are not only a classic throwback to the old Cold War, when the Pentagon and the CIA filled everyone with a deep fear of communism and the Soviet Union, they also demonstrate the rank hypocrisy that has infected U.S. interventionist foreign policy since the advent of the U.S. national-security...
Tyranny at Home to Fight Tyranny Abroad
President Trump has reminded us of how the U.S. government destroyed the liberty of the American people in the name of fighting tyranny abroad. Exercising the same dictatorial method that his predecessors have employed — executive decrees — he has made it illegal again for most Americans to travel to Cuba and spend money there. Trump’s justification? The communist regime in Cuba is tyrannical and engages in human-rights abuses. Think about that for a moment: A foreign regime is tyrannical and so what does a U.S. president do? Through a decree-law, he imposes his own tyranny on his own...
Mexican Journalistic Idiocy on the Drug War
Mexican journalists are protesting the recent drug-gang killing of Mexican award-winning journalist Javier Valdez, who spent his career investigating and reporting on drug cartels. The protesting journalists want the Mexican government to crack down and bring the killers to justice. With all due respect, that’s just journalistic idiocy. What do these journalists think the Mexican government has been doing for the last decade or so? Playing tiddlywinks? Short of shooting suspected drug-law violators on sight, like drug warriors are doing in the Philippines, the Mexican government has pulled...
Madison Was Right about War
Given that so many Americans continue to express gratitude to the troops for their forever service in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere, it would be worthwhile to revisit the immortal words of James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution: Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the...
FFF’s Second Drug War Conference at Florida A&M University
Last month The Future of Freedom Foundation held our second conference on ending the drug war at one of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) — Florida A&M University. The conference was hosted by the ACLU chapters at the law schools of FAMU, Barry University, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Our previous drug war conference at a HBCU was at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Before the evening conference at FAMU, we had an informal social featuring free pizza and soft drinks. The program was kicked off by a welcome from FAMU law school student...
Venezuela’s Lessons for America
The dire situation in Venezuela holds valuable lessons for the American people. The first lesson involves Venezuela’s economic system, which is based on socialism and interventionism. It has produced nothing but chaos, crisis, misery, conflict, discord, and poverty. That’s what socialism does. As an economic system, it is a total failure. Why is that a valuable lesson for Americans? Because the welfare state economic system that Americans adopted in the 1930s is a variation of socialism. That’s what such programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, public schooling, the postal...
South Korea Should Give US Troops the Boot
The best thing that South Koreans could ever do, both for themselves and for the American people, as well as the Japanese citizenry, is boot all U.S. troops out of their country. Isn’t the reason obvious? If President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA succeed in instigating a war with North Korea, guess who is going to pay the biggest price for such a war. No, not the United States. At the end of such a war, the continental United States will remain untouched, just like it was after World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all the other foreign wars in which the U.S....